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Medical education and training
Research
Do we need a core curriculum for medical students? A scoping review
  1. Maulina Sharma1,2,
  2. Ruth Murphy3,
  3. Gillian A Doody1
  1. 1 Medical Education Centre, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  2. 2 Dermatology, University Hospitals of Derby & Burton NHS Foundation Trust, Derby, UK
  3. 3 School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Maulina Sharma; msxms16{at}nottingham.ac.uk

Abstract

Objective The General Medical Council (GMC) recommends medical schools to develop and implement curricula enabling students to achieve the required learning outcomes. UK medical schools follow the GMC’s Outcomes for graduates, which are generic. GMC plans to introduce a national Medical Licensing Assessment (MLA) for the medical graduates wanting to practise medicine in the UK in 2022. With no standardised or unified undergraduate (UG) curriculum in UK, various specialties have expressed concerns about not being represented in medical schools and developed specialty-specific core curricula. The aim of this review was to identify learned bodies who have developed a core curriculum for UK medical schools and highlight the drivers, gaps and future approaches to curricular development and implementation.

Methods A literature search was conducted using online databases (EMBASE, MEDLINE, ERIC, HMIC, PubMed and CDSR), search engines and related websites (Google and Google Scholar, Department of Health, GMC and BMA) for relevant articles from 1996 to 5 March 2019 (~20 years). A methodological framework to map the key concepts of UG medical curriculum was followed. Any relevant body with a core curriculum for UK medical UGs was included.

Results A total of 1283 articles were analysed with 31 articles included in the qualitative synthesis, comprising 26 specialties (clinical n=18, foundation subjects n=4 and professionalism related n=4). WHO, European and national (eg, Royal Colleges of UK) specialty bodies provided specific core learning outcomes for the medical graduates. Patient safety, disease burden, needs of society and inadequate preparedness of medical graduates were drivers for the development of these curricula.

Conclusions This is the first comprehensive review of literature on UG core curricula recommending minimum standards on knowledge and skills, in alignment with GMC’s Outcomes for graduates for all the UK medical students. Adopting and assessing unified standards would help reduce variability across UK medical schools for both generic and specialty-specific competencies.

  • undergraduate
  • medical education and training
  • united kingdom
  • core
  • curriculum

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi-org.ezproxy.u-pec.fr/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-027369

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors All authors have made substantial contributions to the planning, conduct, analyses and interpretation of findings, and reporting of the work described in the article, and have agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work, its accuracy and integrity. MS is responsible for the overall content as guarantor. MS, RM and GAD with RP formulated the review question. MS screened the titles and abstracts of retrieved citations and MS and RM assessed the full text. MS, RM and GAD resolved any ambiguities about inclusion criteria. RM and MS devised the data extraction proforma. MS extracted data and discussed data items with RM and GAD. MS contacted study authors for further information. RM and MS identified common themes, MS conducted the narrative synthesis with RM and GAD. MS wrote the first draft of the manuscript and revised and amended it with RM and GAD who also approved the final version to be published. MS is the corresponding author. The corresponding author attests that all listed authors meet authorship criteria and that no others meeting the criteria have been omitted.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as online supplementary information.